Paper by Erik D. Demaine

We study misère Dots-and-Boxes, where the goal is to minimize score,
for narrow boards. In particular, we characterize the winner for
1 × n boards with an explicit winning strategy for the
first player with a score of ⌊(n − 1)/3⌋.
We also give preliminary results for 2 × n and for
Swedish 1 × n (where the boundary is initially drawn).